{"id":2482,"date":"2026-07-18T14:55:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=2482"},"modified":"2026-08-09T15:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T03:05:08","slug":"nova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2026\/07\/18\/nova\/","title":{"rendered":"Nova"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Corballis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Te Herenga Waka University Press<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Otago Daily Times, July 18th 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Wellington writer Tim Corballis\u2019s latest novel, a work of speculative fiction set in on the deep-space generation ship NOVA, synthesises his various interests in power, philosophy, politics, and possible futures, into a rich and thought provoking tale that defies easy&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">NOVA\u2019s human inhabitants live in a series of self-contained communities, moieties, each with its their own, specialised role in maintaining the ecosystem for a purpose that \u201ctranscended its individual people&#8230;[something] human and not human, larger than human.\u201d But a mere 300 years into a 60,000 year voyage, there are already signs that the centre cannot hold. The physical and ecological environment is deteriorating.&nbsp;&nbsp;Inter-moiety meetings have ceased as people increasingly defer to the ship\u2019s AI, System, as arbiter on matters of shared concern. And there are others living beyond the confines of the moieties whose presence and activities are neither acknowledged nor accounted for.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Kalla, a former moiety leader, is becoming increasingly frustrated by people\u2019s refusal of recognise the evidence of entropic forces on the social and ecological system. Such complacency and unwillingness to change, she believes, risks losing something ineffably human:&nbsp;&nbsp;\u201cLife can\u2019t go on\u201d, she rages \u201cjust with making and using eating and fucking\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">System shares Kalla\u2019s unease. Not only are there are parts of themself they cannot access, something is draining unsustainable amounts of energy. And when a near-fatal accident fractures the barrier between the moieties and outside, Kalla and an isolated strand of System\u2019s awareness venture beyond the breach in search of answers. What they find is anathema both, but the differences between those on either side of the boundary must be reconciled if NOVA is to arrive at its destination with a living cargo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The challenges facing NOVA and its inhabitants may be tropes of the genre but remain highly relevant to the present day: What sacrifices are required to maintain a functioning and stable systems in a closed and resource-limited environment? How might individuals collaborate in the interests of goal that will only be realised many generations in the future? Can this be achieved without fundamental changes to our sociopolitical systems of law and governance, or should it be left to an algorithm to uphold laws and determine which \u2018non-necessary\u2019 pursuits can be dispensed with in the name of efficiency?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Corbalis\u2019s solution, which combines the meaning- making but transitory aspects of embodied life with AI\u2019s capacity to anticipate every eventuality on a journey so long it defies human comprehension, is surprisingly optimistic. But it is his exploration of the role and nature of artificial intelligence that is the most memorable aspect of the novel, not least his decision to give the narrative to System rather than one of the human protagonists. It plays with language and form in a way that both suggests and disavows Systems\u2019 self-awareness, bifurcates as they carry out simultaneous conversations with different characters, and is interrupted by discursions into everything from systems theory to state-legitimised violence. It is a novel that requires a level of concentration that some may find challenging, but its rewards are more than worth the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Corballis Te Herenga Waka University Press Otago Daily Times, July 18th 2026 Wellington writer Tim Corballis\u2019s latest novel, a work of speculative fiction set in on the deep-space generation ship NOVA, synthesises his various interests in power, philosophy, politics, and possible futures, into a rich and thought provoking tale that defies easy&nbsp; NOVA\u2019s human [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[518,370,500,18,407,530],"class_list":["post-2482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-518","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt","tag-speculative-sci-fi","tag-tim-corballis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2482"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2488,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions\/2488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}